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Oddly the only Literacy skills that is started with the OCCs are the Shifter and the Techno-Wizard.

Any one wonder why learned beings of magic not knowing how to read and write?

Even better are the classes that don't have a language at all, Native or otherwise. Just a bunch of illiterate mutes running around, unless they take an elective growing up. XD

GT wrote:Oddly the only Literacy skills that is started with the OCCs are the Shifter and the Techno-Wizard.

Any one wonder why learned beings of magic not knowing how to read and write?

Magic in RIFTs isn't like your standard popular TRPG (D&D, Pathfinder, etc) so there is no spell book to speak of to loot/find/gain from rewards. Generally speaking even spell scrolls are uncommon due to the nature of greed with casters to be well unwilling to share their magic knowledge. Rue pg 190 goes over this in greater detail with Step 8: The Pursuit of Magic. Not to mean you can't buy it which you can but it isn't just going to be lying around for some other caster to pick up. And the whole tone in RIFTs is that reading in general isn't very common either. In the case of Mystics they can't learn new spells through being taught new spells so they don't really have a reason to bother to learn to read. Magic Scrolls are useless to them even if they find any. The RIFTs novels (Sonic Boom, Deception's Web and Treacherous Awakening) actually have an example of this exact thing.

Most mages aren’t literate in Rifts.

Crimson Dynamo wrote:Even better are the classes that don't have a language at all, Native or otherwise. Just a bunch of illiterate mutes running around, unless they take an elective growing up. XD

Which classes are those? I just went through the RUE book, & even the Dragon Hatchlings have a Language skill (albeit mentioned only in passing as an "instinctive" skill for Language: Dragonese). Interestingly, though, most O.C.C.s in RUE have their Language: Native (or Language: American) frozen at a specific percentage, with literally only a handful having it listed as "Language: Native (+xx%)". I'm guessing that is supposed to represent the lack of a formal education for 99% of the characters out there, with only those few from a working educational system able to actually improve their language skills.

Have a gander of some of the O.C.C.s in Mercenaries. The Bounty Hunter, Safecracker, and Special Forces classes don't have any Languages if I recall. I think one of them has a Literacy skill at least, though! So they have that going for them.

There's others, too, though I don't recall where they're from.

Crimson Dynamo wrote:Have a gander of some of the O.C.C.s in Mercenaries. The Bounty Hunter, Safecracker, and Special Forces classes don't have any Languages if I recall. I think one of them has a Literacy skill at least, though! So they have that going for them.

There's others, too, though I don't recall where they're from.

Ah, I see, those are based on the RMB game setting. The key is in the description of the Language skill from RMB & the GMG:

Characters with a language skill can understand and speak in a language other than their own native tongue (emphasis added)

This is also separate from the Literacy skill in RMB, where you weren't assumed to automatically be literate (even in your native language).

actually I believe there is a rolling characters thing that says all characters are supposed to have at least their native language as an automatic thing but not literacy unless its gotten in other places

green.nova343 wrote:

Crimson Dynamo wrote:Even better are the classes that don't have a language at all, Native or otherwise. Just a bunch of illiterate mutes running around, unless they take an elective growing up. XD

Which classes are those? I just went through the RUE book, & even the Dragon Hatchlings have a Language skill (albeit mentioned only in passing as an "instinctive" skill for Language: Dragonese). Interestingly, though, most O.C.C.s in RUE have their Language: Native (or Language: American) frozen at a specific percentage, with literally only a handful having it listed as "Language: Native (+xx%)". I'm guessing that is supposed to represent the lack of a formal education for 99% of the characters out there, with only those few from a working educational system able to actually improve their language skills.

Most of the early Rifts books didn't include speaking your native tongue as a skill for the majority of the classes. It was only an issue for the few RCCs that had a non-American language as their native one. AFAIK it wasn't until RUE that the skill was included for all classes.